Andrea Higginbotham's blog

Fresh on the heels of last week's (September 10, 2013) well-attended Congressional briefing exploring the issue of public access to taxpayer funded research, a groundswell of support is taking shape in the academic community for the proposed Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) bill.

Earlier this week, Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN) introduced the H.R. 4186, the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology (FIRST) Act. It’s a bit surprising that there has been so little coverage of this very controversial bill. Among many troubling provisions, the bill includes language on public access that SPARC strongly opposes.

One year ago today, Open Access advocates, researchers, librarians, technology leaders, patient advocates, entrepreneurs, students, and every-day Americans celebrated as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a landmark directive requiring that the results of all publicly funded research be made freely available. SPARC was among those cheering the loudest.

Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the tragic death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet icon, web activist, and computer genius, who fought tirelessly for open access to information and the free diffusion of knowledge. Aaron believed that knowledge should be freely available to everyone across the globe, and although we have by no means reached this lofty goal, by any measure, 2013 was a watershed year for the Open Access movement.

Word from CERN today is that the long-awaited launch of the SCOAP3 Open Access publishing initiative will officially happen on January 1, 2014. As SPARC members are well aware, SCOAP3 (The Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) is an international collaboration of more than a thousand libraries, library consortia and research organizations who have banded together to collectively provide full Open Access to the majority of articles published in the discipline of high-energy research.

Yesterday, ScienceMagazine published an article reporting on a “sting” exercise designed to expose the flaws in the editorial processes of Open Access journals. The article “Who’s Afraid of Peer Review?” by self-proclaimed “gonzo” scientist John Bohannon recounts his experience in submitting a deliberately flawed scientific paper under a pseudonym to 304 Open Access journals over a ten month period.

We are pleased to announce the lineup of speakers for the SPARC/World Bank Global Open Access Week kickoff event, which will take place on Monday, October 21st starting at 3pm at the World Bank in Washington D.C.